


gone are the days of begging

by Wildehack (Tyleet)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyleet/pseuds/Wildehack
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hey," Rey says. "Couldn't sleep. Sorry to wake you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	gone are the days of begging

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt on tumblr: 
> 
> Anonymous asked: Prompt: Rey discovers and becomes super into __________ (some genre of music; I was thinking jazz, but I can also picture pop/punk type stuff, but you decide!).

The dream is half memory, half fantasy: she reaches into Kylo Ren’s mind and _digs_ , gets her hand around something good, and yanks it loose. She pulls her hand out, and it’s black with grease, like she’s been rooting around in an engine. In the center of her palm she discovers three perfect human teeth, their roots long and repulsively yellow.  
  
She jerks awake with a sick throb of guilt, and has to grit her teeth against the nausea. Luke hasn’t told her what she did was Dark, exactly, but she can tell that’s what he thinks.   
  
There’s no point in going back to sleep now. She could go to see if Luke’s awake-–he keeps odd hours, and often wanders the island while she sleeps–-or she could get up, make some kaf, and head down to the Falcon. She and Chewie have been building a speeder from space junk, and she could probably get a few hours of work in, before the sun came up. Rey sits up, props herself against the wall, and sighs. She doesn’t want to do any of those things.   
  
She wants Finn.   
  
Luke’s given her the lecture about the dangers of attachment, how it led to his father’s fall, Kylo Ren’s fall, how it led to the downfall of everything Luke worked for. Rey thinks she understands-–love is dangerous, for people like them. But what is danger, really, except a stick to measure yourself by? Building her first speeder was dangerous-–she still has a burn on her forearm from the engine sparking. Climbing into the ruins of the Adaptor was dangerous–-Rey broke an ankle when she was twelve, fumbling her descent from the main cabin to the hangar. Yanking the Millennium Falcon into the sky was dangerous beyond reason, but it was possibly the best choice Rey’s ever made in her life. It’s important to know you’re putting yourself in peril, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t _do_ it.   
  
Rey’s programming Finn’s designation into R2′s communications array before she’s really done rationalizing it to herself. The truth is–-it’s late, and she’s still a little afraid of herself. She just wants Finn to look at her. She always knows who she is, when Finn looks at her.   
  
It takes Finn a minute to answer, and when he does she realizes guiltily that it’s late where he is, too, because the room is dark behind him, and he’s got a blanket wrapped over his shoulders. “Hey,” he says, giving her a sleepy smile. There’s a little crease on his cheek, from his pillow. “Everything okay?”   
  
“Fine,” Rey says, and her voice comes out a little hoarse, because _kriff_ , she already feels better. “Couldn’t sleep. Sorry to wake you.”   
  
“Don’t be,” he says, warm. He lowers himself to his elbows, settling in. “You wanna talk about it?”   
  
She doesn’t ask how he knows there’s something to talk about. She shakes her head, gratefully, and Finn doesn’t blink.   
  
“You want to listen to the record I just got?” he asks, rubbing his mouth. “We stopped at a city yesterday–-can’t say where over the air, but they had  _amazing_ soup, with leaves and chilis, you’d love it-–and I found the new Ziima release. I was gonna send you a copy as soon as I got through it. It’s Soccoran-Corellian fusion, kind of like Miranda, but mellower?”   
  
Rey doesn’t really know music. She’d scraped a small library together off of Empire salvage over the years, but it was all thirty years out of date, and tended towards Coruscant opera. She can still sing a decent aria, as a result. Finn loves music–-all kinds, but especially obscure, new bands that only play in three cantinas on one backwater planet. There was apparently a roaring black market in stolen records, amongst First Order troopers. “Sure,” she says, although she doesn’t know who Miranda is, or what contemporary Socorran or Corellian music really sounds like unfused.   
  
Finn smiles at her. “Okay,” he says. “Just say if you don’t like it.”   
  
He puts the record on, and Rey uses the Force to summon her pillow and blanket across the room, so she can curl up in front of the holo. Finn tells her a couple things about the band, at first, in a low murmur-–the singer, the drummer, and the negasonic cymballist were all apparently married once, but they went through a very messy divorce last year, while they were on tour. The concerts were _intense_. Finn sounds a little wistful.   
  
Then the song turns over, and Finn’s commentary sort of slips away, which is a good thing, because this _song_ –-it’s light but dense, catchy but strange, the words tripping delightfully over each other like water over rocks. The song after it is even better, deeper and sweeter, but not slower. It’s not a song that lets you do anything but _hear_ it. Rey clutches her pillow to her chest, smiling hard.   
  
Finn’s grinning too, and his eyes are so fond that she can’t quite meet them straight on. “Turn it up a little?” she asks, and he does, the music rolling over them in a glittering wave, filling her up and hollowing her out at the same time. They listen, and they listen, and the dream slowly leaches away from her, leaves her calm and clean.  
  
“Finn,” she says when the album finally finishes, so sincere that her voice trembles slightly. “Finn, I _love_ them.”   
  
“There’s five more albums,” he tells her, and _oh_ , she wants to kiss him for it, wants to curl into his sleepy warmth and wrap the sparkling fairytale sound over them both like a blanket, all dangers banished for a little while.    
  
Finn falls asleep halfway through the next album, his face gone sweet and slack, blanket slipping off the curve of his shoulder. Very carefully, Rey lies down at R2′s side, huddling in on herself. “Night, Finn,” she whispers, and Finn sighs in his sleep, turns slightly towards the sound of her voice.   
  
Luke finds her like that in the morning: sound asleep on the floor, the fading strains of Ziima’s complete discography still playing from a Resistance holoport, although Finn is already awake and gone. There’s a note propped up on his pillow, projected on the floor by Rey’s head.   
  
_Sent you Ziima_ , it reads. _Try The Machinists too? Love, F._

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm essentially imagining Space Florence & The Machine, because it's dreamy and glittery and narrative and romantic and maybe Rey would like them? Ziima's mid-divorce tour is stolen from Richard and Linda Thompson's fatal mid-divorce Shoot Out The Lights tour, which I understand was VERY intense but also very cool to witness? 
> 
> Title is from Between Two Lungs: 
> 
> Gone are the days of begging  
> The days of theft  
> No more gasping for a breath

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] gone are the days of begging](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6843682) by [millihelenic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/millihelenic/pseuds/millihelenic)




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